Is saliva composition related to oral fat sensitivity or exposure?

Parution prochaine de la présentation orale dans un livre; International audience; To characterize the taste of drinking waters, Teillet et al. (2010) used first a free sorting task and then defined the Polarized Sensory Positioning (PSP) technique as a substitute better suited to industrial constraints. They conclude that Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) is the main driver of water taste. Puget et al. (2010) found, based on triangular tests, that differences in mineral profiles can also generate taste differences. The research reported in this paper aims at assessing relative importance of TDS and mineral profile in water taste and at the same time comparing free sorting task, PSP and triangular test suitability for addressing this issue. Three levels of TDS (low, medium and high) were chosen to match the 3 commercial waters used as poles in Teillet (2010). Then each of these 3 waters were enriched in either Na+, Ca2+, Mg2+ or Cl- producing 4 different mineral profiles at a given TDS level. The set of the 3 commercial and 12 experimental waters can be seen as a 3x5 factorial design crossing 3 levels of TDS with 5 mineral profiles. A panel of 100 consumers did free sorting task, PSP and 45 triangular tests on these 15 waters in 6 sessions. Results confirmed that TDS is definitely a more important driver of water taste than mineral profile even though some differences between mineral profiles were found, especially for medium and high TDS levels. Free sorting task, contrarily to triangular tests, was the method which showed a stronger TDS effect to the expense of a weaker mineral profile effect. The latter was better found with triangular test, whereas PSP behaved in between free sorting task and triangular tests. Although results of the three methods were never discordant, free sorting task seems to overlook the most subtle mineral profile differences found by triangular test, whereas PSP appears as a sort of compromise with an experimental cost 4 times smaller than the triangular test one.